


Falling Up

by lollipopmania



Category: Naruto
Genre: Drabble Collection, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-27
Updated: 2013-09-27
Packaged: 2017-12-27 17:48:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/981836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lollipopmania/pseuds/lollipopmania
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>two prompts: lonely/hanging from a cliff. written under a twenty minute time constraint, though i didn't finish. the break is when the alarm went off.</p></blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

note: this is posted here for now because ff is still having technical troubles. written in response to the fandom flip out of 647. also written under time-constraint

…

 _You promised_ is the first thing he hears when he wakes up.

He doesn’t need to open his eyes—which is good, because he doesn’t think he can—to know that Temari is the one accusing him.

"Some compassion would be nice," he responds. His voice is dry and chap and the words come out in heaved breaths between long silences. But he tries to laugh anyway and smile because she is here. And he is alive.

"Shikamaru…" she warns.

"Either way, I didn’t break it."

"Are you really going to go into fucking technicalities _now_?”

He opens his mouth to retort but then quickly shuts it and takes a pitiful time to open his eyes instead. She has crudely-performed stitches across her cheek and he figures she must haven’t found a med nin yet—though considering he is in one of the primitive infirmary tents set up right off the front lines, he supposes she just hasn’t stopped long enough to find one of the dozens of medics.

"You’re right," he says after an extended breath, "I’m sorry."

"You fucking better be."

"Temari…"

"How am I supposed to be out there when you’re doing stupid shit and trying to die?"

It isn’t a real question, because they both know the answer: he dies, she fights. Death means nothing in war

( _death is beautiful in war)_

and no matter how many promises he makes and how much she hurts she can’t stop. And if the situation were reversed, neither would he.

But it is nice to think that he had an option and that it was his fault he almost died and that she would be unable to go forward without him. But the idea is a luxury and shouldn’t be confused with reality.

"Bastard." She mutters, eyes skansing to the window.

"How long has it been?" He asks instead.

"A little over a day, I guess. I just got word."

"How is it looking?"

She shrugs and glances back at him. “Better than you.”

His lungs hurt and he can’t feel most of his limbs, but he is well versed in medication, or at least enough to recognize he isn’t suffering from paralysis. But he is sure he looks like shit.

"Temari," he tries after another time has passed, "do you want me to say it again?"

"Excuse me?"

"Will it make you feel better?"

"I’m not some half-witted school girl, Shikamaru."

"I didn’t say that."

"I don’t need you to tell me you’ll be okay.”

The look on her face is almost comical in how little it appears. She ‘s hard as stone, he remembers, but it is difficult to keep that image with fluctuating tendencies. When she is asking for something when saying the opposite (which, he’d admit, happened more often recently).

"I know," he says after a few seconds, "but I want to say it."

She rolls her eyes and he isn’t surprised (a little happy, even) to see the beginnings of tears refusing to break past lashes.

"I promise," he begins, for the second time in six months, "I won’t die now. I won’t die yet. I’ll see this through, at least until I manage to wrangle a ring onto your finger and a few children inside you."

Temari snorts indignantly and waves her hand as though passing off his words, but after a second, without even looking at him again, she turns on her heel and walks right out of the tent. It is only when she is gone and a flap of burlap is between them that he hears her speak.

_You’d better._

Shikamaru doesn’t know if it is the medication or what, but he sleeps deeper than night than he has in a little while.


	2. Lonely

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two prompts: lonely/hanging from a cliff. written under a twenty minute time constraint, though i didn't finish. the break is when the alarm went off.

......

Between traffic lights and steaming coffee and collard shirts and ink stains she isn't lonely. She isn't lonely. With smiles and flashing lights and long words with easy meanings and arrogance and used condoms and sore backs, she isn't lonely. 

She can still walk into her usual coffee shop without her bodyguards and she can sit down in the corner and feel ceramic against her bottom lip. She isn't empty and she isn't broken. 

But she feels little else beside the china on her skin and his eyes when he looks at her (though she is usually the one looking at him).

Her belt around her waist pushes into her form, digging lines that only fade during the night before being reprinted during the day and she fixes her hair in the morning and is told to put ice beneath her eyes to push the blood away from the swell and has a special light color to swipe on to make her alive and bright and most days she falls asleep in the makeup chair with her head held high as people surround her touching and painting and she recognizes her made up self more than her bare self more and more. 

She isn't lonely though. She isn't hanging from some cliff waiting for a hand to reach out. She is balanced on high heeled shoes and with colored lips. A kaleidoscope of beauty and mystery and seduction and intelligence and she is the woman who can do everything but everything is less than All. 

She never asked for this. 

She is a daughter first. A sister second. 

But what is blood in front of cameras? Family ties mean nothing between drafts of bills and laws and oak-tree schools and fluctuations of languages. 

She never had a choice. But it's no matter because she never had a chance. 

Government is a fancy word to describe a lost structure. Celebrity is her career and Image is her maintenance. 

But she isn't lonely. 

She knows he thinks so though. She can always tell. He looks at her and sees Her, not the person she is presented in front of him as. It isn't like they've been friends before. Or he has seen her for years. She comes in some nights and sits down and he brings her coffee and tells her that she looks tired. But the bruises are hidden beneath her eyes and she is easily presentable as ever, but he closes the blinds and shrugs away her indignation and sits by the counter and does the crossword. 

The world speeds on and gasoline ingrains itself in tar and she comes and sits and sometimes forgets to touch her coffee but by the time she wakes up the place is clean and he is offering a hand even if there was never any cliff she stumbled off. (or maybe she was holding on too tightly to notice her slipping feet).

Temari isn't lonely as months move on and she forgets the date even as she recites it. Temari isn't lonely when the shutters click and she decides not to look back though she is sure his dark eyes aren't watching her leave the shop, though most nights she wishes they were. She isn't lonely when she crawls into an empty bed without a partner and wishes her degrees and fame could give her the skill set to produce the words to invite him in, but she has never shared a mattress outside of a hotel and she is sure he'd say no (even though she sleeps better in the loveseats of his shops when he is there). Temari isn't lonely every night she

 

...

leaves him. 

Between traffic lights and steaming coffee and collard shirts and ink stains she isn't lonely. She isn't lonely.


End file.
